[Techtalk] Debian versus GenToo

[Beth Skwarecki]

> Well, testing, in my experience, is 99% or more stable, but allows you 
> to use stuff that's beyond stable.  

Sure - but the lack of security updates is, I think, a big issue. With
unstable you can just update often; with stable you can have updates going
on a cron job. But what happens if there's a remote root exploit? The bugfix
won't be out for at least two weeks (since there is a two-week waiting
period for packages to move into testing, and it could easily be a lot
longer).

As somebody mentioned, it's fine for many home systems, and in fact I've
recommended it to people - but only when I was sure of their situation.
Stable or unstable ends up working better for most people.

As stable ages, the stable/testing decision gets harder and harder. But
sarge is coming out soon ... at least that's what they're saying now.

> Truth be told, though, I haven't tried unstable -- how unstable is it 
> really?

There are three important parts of the answer to this question: 

1. It doesn't crash or do silly things like that. "unstable" refers to buggy
packages, not to the behavior of installed systems.

2. Critical problems with unstable's packages are very rare; I've never had
a problem, personally.

3. but IF there is a problem, you need to know how to diagnose and fix it.
This is why we don't recommend unstable to newbies. If you upgraded all your
packages one day and found that your computer wouldn't boot, would you know
what to do? (it involves finding the bug on the Bug Tracking System, and
performing whatever repair work is necessary ... not everybody is
comfortable with this kind of thing)

 

-- 
Beth Skwarecki
http://www.loxosceles.org/
print map {$x=$!=$_; $x=~s/[b-gik-oq-z]//ig; $x} (66,56,62,113)